


Flavors of Submission

by Yeah_JSmith



Series: Ruff Stuff [18]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kink, Nick is a Treasure, References to Addiction, Talk of BDSM, Talk of murder, reference to abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 01:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18355613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeah_JSmith/pseuds/Yeah_JSmith
Summary: One year after his incarceration, Nate Snow has a chat with Oliver Evergreen — or Nick, as he's really called — about the three things they have in common: submission, baggage, and Judy Hopps.





	Flavors of Submission

**Author's Note:**

> To those who didn't see it (which is like, probably nobody), Nate Snow was Dark Nick. We only saw _Exhibit A_ through Judy's eyes, which means that we saw her incorrectly identify and sympathize with him _as a domme,_ but we had no idea how Nick would have interacted with him alone. Nate Snow officially meets Nick Wilde, and we see why Nate was so erratic there at the end of EA.

Nathaniel Snow had a long and complicated relationship with pawcuffs, which was useful when he wanted to psych out the guards. They were prudish, easily prodded — much like Nate himself had been, once upon a time, before his experiences had turned him into something unrecognizable. Unfortunately, his visitor wasn’t someone he could freak out.

He’d never gotten Oliver Evergreen’s real name, having settled the matter outside of court. He could _probably_ have bought a good defense. He could _probably_ have made himself a sympathetic character to a jury. But ultimately, Nate had decided to accept the plea deal; he was a fox in a system made for other species. A fox who had killed someone. A fox who, according to authorities who didn’t know any better, had _abused_ mammals. It was ridiculous, of course — BDSM was a heavy, nuanced thing that simple-minded fools couldn’t understand — but it worked against him. Judy Hopps had seen to that.

“Hello, Oliver,” he said pleasantly, examining the dog across from him. His fur was apparently reddish-orange and cream instead of silver and black; it had been a clever disguise, not trying to switch to another kind of fox.

“It’s Nick,” said Nick.

“Hello, Nick.” They sat at the table silently. Nate, at first, tried to size up the other fox, until he realized that Nick wasn’t doing the same. There was no battle for dominance there. Nick simply existed in his own space, a valuable trait that foxes didn’t tend to get the chance to cultivate. Here was the most natural submissive Nate had ever met, just sitting there, dominating the room effortlessly. Annoyed at his own jealousy, Nate asked, “Why are you here?”

Nick shrugged, looking unconcerned. “Judy wanted to see for herself that you’re okay, but it’s against protocol. I’m not a cop, so I can do whatever I want. How are you, Nate?”

“I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse,” he replied truthfully.

The shameful reality was that Nate had a complicated relationship with prison, too. He missed his freedom, and he missed his computers, but the structure of prison suited him. There was no need to choose the right kind of clothing as armor against the world; there was no need to pretend he was better than all the other foxes; there was no need to make decisions; there was no need to pretend he was something he wasn’t. He woke when they said so, he ate what and when they told him to, he exercised when it was time to exercise, he read pre-approved books when he was allowed to, he slept when it was time to sleep. The company was wretched, but this wasn’t so far off from the life he might have chosen for himself in a different world, maybe one where he’d met someone like Judy Hopps instead of Patrice Pawson.

As a bonus, he was sober — that had been a fucking _nightmare,_ but the withdrawals were over — and he was eating regularly, so his memories were organizing themselves. He still couldn’t quite remember the night Sarah had died, at least not with any kind of linear timeline, but he did remember delivering the blow that had killed her, so that was something.

Nick looked at Nate, and he felt naked. Part of him bristled at the attention, but Nick had seen him crossfaded and getting irrationally angry at a stupid book in a bar. Compared to that, this was positively tame. Finally, Nick clicked his claws on the table and said, “I wasn’t expecting you to be so calm. Most of the mammals Judy puts away are a little more angry.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m furious, but not at you. Not even really at her. I know where the blame belongs.” Nate shrugged off Sarah’s betrayal, and his grin was all teeth. “I’m surprised _you’re_ not angry with _me._ I tried to steal your girl.”

Nick’s laugh was nasal, a little obnoxious, but not closed or defensive. His expression was one of genuine amusement, and when he leaned back, his body language was completely relaxed. “You can’t steal her, she’s not mine. When you get right down to it, I’m not hers, either, even though I’d like to be. Nobody can ever really own another mammal. If she had allowed you to seduce her, then we’d talk about it...but more importantly, she wouldn’t be the mammal I love. If there’s one thing I know about Judy Hopps, it’s that she would never let a murderer into her bed.”

“Just into her heart,” Nate retorted meanly, hoping to get Nick to _stop._

“Of course. My mistress loves everyone, to her detriment sometimes. You still have a place in her heart...and in mine.”

Nate blinked a few times, trying to figure out what that meant. He couldn’t. Of course _Oliver Evergreen_ had seemed like the perfect friend: an unashamed male sub, a fellow fox who thrived in an interspecies relationship. Nate had been completely stoned the day Luna had turned up on his doorstep, or he would never have offered what he’d offered her. He wouldn’t have fed into his own delusion that Luna and Oliver could just be his friends and teach him _how to be a mammal_ again. Honestly, he had never considered that Oliver — _Nick —_ had been genuine in their interactions. “How does that work?”

“Judy doesn’t believe this,” Nick said slowly, as though he were measuring his words before pouring them into the space between, “but you are who I could have been. I was on a really bad path before I met her. I was homeless, angry, alone, scared...I’d been bullied into thinking I could only ever rely on myself...I’ve always been submissive. It’s part of who I am, and I’m proud of that; it makes me strong. But I can see myself latching onto someone who would feed me and tell me what to do, even if they were abusive as hell, so long as they showed me a little affection. I know for a fact that at that point in my life, someone could have warped me like your abuser warped you, because I’ve always tied myself into _knots_ for scraps of love wherever I could find them. After just a few weeks with Judy, I was ready to follow her through anything, and the only reason I’m not on your side of the table is that _she was worth it._ She respects me. She loves me. The only thing she ever expects from me is that I treat myself well, and I turned into a better fox for one reason: not because she changed me, but because she gave me the courage to try to be who I had always wanted to be. I see so many echoes of myself in you, Nate. Things that could have been. And maybe Judy’s right about me; maybe there are some depths I could never sink to. But we’ll never know, and I wish we had met you before any of this had happened.”

“I murdered my own girlfriend,” he pointed out, an ugly truth used as a defensive weapon. He didn’t like the way Nick was making him feel. He didn’t _want_ to be accepted by Luna and Oliver Evergreen, the bright mirror of himself and the unflinching domme who’d caught him by pulling a goddamn seduction scam.

“Yeah, after she tried to kill you. Don’t get me wrong, Nate, I think what you did was awful, but I’m not talking about the murder. The first time you hit her after tying her up it stopped being self-defense, but I’m talking about the rest of it. We met the others. The ones you abused.”

“Can you stop _saying that?”_ Nate gave Nick his ugliest look, mostly out of irritation. “I never abused anyone!”

“I can see why you would think that,” Nick allowed with a wave of his paw. It looked flippant, almost bratty, but his tone didn’t match, and Nate wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kick Nick or be him. “You got their consent for all your explicitly stated BDSM acts. And for sex. So it doesn’t matter that you preyed on your employees, right?”

Nate narrowed his eyes at the deliberate use of _prey._ It was an old-fashioned term, something politically incorrect, something derogatory. “Care to rephrase that, _Oliver?”_

Nick’s smirk was large and definitely bratty. “Nah, I think I got it right. Some of them were depending on their job for financial stability. Others were trying to make it in the field and relying on you as a trusted mentor. You propositioned them from a position of power. You dommed them psychologically and _then_ dropped the bomb that you got off on it. You refused to bottom for any of them-”

“I had a _reason-”_

“No reason is good enough,” Nick snapped. He placed his paws flat on the table and leaned forward, looking Nate in the eye, and suddenly, Nate knew what it was like to look into the eyes of a hungry predator. “Judy’s right, I could never be you, at least not the you I see sitting in front of me. I acknowledge my baggage, and I acknowledge that I used to use it as an excuse to behave badly, and I’ve _never_ been able to just pretend I wasn’t a piece of shit before I shaped up. Deny it all you like, but it will always be true that you’re the villain in too many stories. The fact that you have your own tragic origin story is _irrelevant.”_

“Like yours,” Nate asked delicately. That was obviously a hot button for Nick, and he could guess why. “Is it irrelevant that _you’ve_ been hurt? Isn’t that — being broken — why you’re a sub?”

Apparently deciding to ignore Nate’s jab, Nick asked, “You know that feeling you get when you’re little and you don’t know where to go? And then an adult grabs your paw and brings you back to where you belong?”

“Yeah,” he replied warily.

“It’s the same when you get older, too, right? It feels good to fit in. When you do what you’re told and you get rewarded for it, you really feel...well, it feels nice. To be acknowledged and liked.”

“Sure.”

“All through life, it feels good, it feels _safe,_ to follow the rules. If you follow them, the damage to yourself is minimal, and if you break them, you’re doing it on purpose. It feels good to break the rules sometimes, but it feels better to be acknowledged for doing good, and sometimes you end up breaking the rules because nobody cares if you’re good or not. Especially when you’re a fox. Would you agree?”

“Obviously,” Nate replied, rolling his eyes. That was just an account of mammal nature. “What’s your point?”

“Judy wouldn’t agree. She just fundamentally doesn’t think that way. She’s been hurt a lot, Nate, and she’s internalized a lot of it, but she doesn’t think like you and I do. It doesn’t matter if other mammals see her as _good,_ as long as she’s doing what she believes is _right._ She follows rules that suit her and edges around or tries to change the rules that are stupid. She doesn’t have a submissive bone in her body, and it shows in the way she interacts with, well, the world. You could argue that who we are is impermanent, that dominance and submission are preferences shaped by experience...and I’m not a neuroscientist, I wouldn’t be able to tell you otherwise. What I do know is that the first and only time I was ever in a muzzle, I hated myself more than I hated the boys who forced it on me, because I was sure that I’d done something to deserve it. My parents loved me. They treated me like royalty. I was good in school, my teachers liked me...I wasn’t broken, I wasn’t an abused kit, but my first instinct was to apologize. Sometimes it’s just who we are. I don’t know why you’re so ashamed of it.” Nick, suddenly, looked very faraway, and fingered his collar. It was a pretty thing, thick, with some kind of floral pattern tooled in it. Silver buckles, a silver ring. Someone had commissioned it. “Whenever someone recognizes what this collar means, even if they’re disgusted, I’m _so damn proud._ I get to submit to my mistress.”

“Yeah, must be nice,” he said, and he couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. Nate had an acute sense of longing — once upon a time, he’d had someone who took him out of his own body. Patrice may have been abusive, but the in-between had been _wonderful._  “Having a domme who _actually_ loves you.”

“She loved you too, you know.” Nate raised an eyebrow, but Nick just stared at him, steady, unamused. “Not just in the way she loves everyone. It wasn’t abstract. She _loved you,_ as an individual.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nate snarled. “I’m a killer. She’s a cop.”

“Is it, though? The case broke her heart. When we learned about Patrice, she was angry for you. When she got to know you...she didn’t want to arrest you. She wanted _so badly_ for you to be...well, not innocent, you were never innocent, but not guilty of murder. She wanted to help you.”

Nate snorted. “Are you sure you don’t resent me for that?”

“Not remotely,” Nick returned with a soft smile. “It takes a lot of strength to put yourself out there like she does. I can’t resent you; it’s one of the reasons I love her.”

“Well, you can tell her I’m just fine. She shouldn’t worry her pretty little head over the _abuser_ she locked up,” he said snidely.

“I will tell her. And she’ll be happy to know,” Nick replied, sounding so honest that Nate once again wasn’t sure if he wanted to kick him or be him. “You take care of yourself, Nate. Don’t mouth off to the wrong mammal. We’d both be pretty upset if something happened to you.”

Nate stayed silent and watched him go. Nick had come here to check up on him — sure, Nate could buy that — but he recognized that _need to know._ Nick really thought they were the same. And if Nate were honest with himself, he could admit that mostly, they were. But Nick was special, outside of his relationship with the bunny cop, and that spark was something that Nate had never had. Nick was a good guy, and Nate…

Well. Nate was in pawcuffs again, and this time, there was nowhere to run.

**Author's Note:**

> Is Nick being honest, or just trying to psych out Nate? I guess Nate will never know.


End file.
